


Invisible

by Medorikoi



Category: Hair - MacDermot/Rado/Ragni
Genre: M/M, PTSD, Vietnam War, War Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-04-21
Updated: 2011-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:39:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medorikoi/pseuds/Medorikoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are more ways to die than just to end. Sometimes Claude felt as if he had died a hundred deaths. A death with each unanswered letter, a death for each time Berger failed to hear him cry out. So now Claude is home, but he isn’t. Vietnam wasted. The walking dead. Human number 1005963297.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invisible

The park was no different than it had been a year before. The grass was green and the skies were indescribable blue, the kind of blue you only can only see when your mind is free, flying through space and everything is too beautiful to be real. It was as if the world as he knew it had not changed at all, as if he could take a breath and open his eyes and wake up as the man he had once been, the boy he could barely remember.

But the memories had faded as his mind was soaked in blood, the places he had once existed becoming brittle and yellow like a photograph curling in the jungle heat.

It was all the same, the park, this life, this city. It was him that was different.

He was not the boy with the long dark hair and the accent which he had not needed in the end but used just to see his friends smile. He was not the almost lover, the best friend, the child, the hippie, the pacifist, the son, the dropout, the human being.

That boy had died across the wrong sea in an ocean of blood and a hail of gunfire, taking up arms against a people he had never even met. A boy falling to his knees in a jungle where nothing was ever dry and the air was so thick that it hung in your lungs like poison miasma.

A little boy who died because maybe, he could not sleep alone.

And now?

Him?

This body walking through a park in faceless New York City pretending to see the sky?

He was nothing.

A ghost.

He was invisible and all miracles were beyond him.

He had not made the choice to come here. It happens sometimes. He would wake and dress and try to understand that he was not in danger, that the sounds were in his mind, the screams had already died. He tried to remember that the feeling creeping up his spine and sinking into his gut was nothing but his mind sinking into dark oblivion and madness.

And then he opened his eyes and saw the perfect sky and he never felt so far apart from anything.

This was not his world.

He did not belong with beautiful things.

But he walked as if these thoughts did not plague him, he was lucky they told him. Lucky to recover, lucky to have served, lucky to be given the chance to make his country proud, to become a real man.

Lucky to come back alive.

None of that mattered though.

How could they not tell that he was dead?

He thought of coming back here before, his real home, his home without a house, his home with love and family and arms and warmth and embraces and kisses, the only place that had ever made sense, the only place he ever wanted to be as old men ordered little boys to die.

He could glide through and just watch for a little while.

Invisible.

He was not afraid that they would see him. But he was afraid.

What if he got lost in their beauty? What if he could not find it in himself to leave them again? A ghost on the periphery of their existence.

What if he sat with them and just for a moment, pretended to be that boy?

It would just be faster her supposed, to die this way, to lose his mind all at once instead of slowly, like it was slipping through his fingers and he could not muster the courage to save himself.

Reason enough to die to touch their hair just once, to feel the tangles in his fingers so softly that they would never know he was there at all, to hear their voices, to see their faces and know that somewhere this existed.

That somewhere life was still beautiful.

It was silly, but he did not care.

Silly, because he had written.

He had not written to the mother who had sent him to war with a smile or to the father that was proud to have his son murder.

But he had written to Berger.

He had told him that he had died inside, that he was still dying. He had told him what it was like to never ever be dry, to forget what it felt like to be just hungry instead of starving. He had told him what it was like to wake up from your restless slumber and find that two men had killed themselves in the night and that one of them was still breathing, what it was like to hold him in your arms and tell him it would be okay even as his breathing slowed. He told Berger how it felt when the breathing stopped and they were free and still warm in your arms you were still stuck there all alone.

He told him what it was like to die.

He told him that he missed him. That he missed all of them and he would give anything just to hold them again.

And then when no letters came, when everyone else got letters from lovers and friends and parents and siblings and he got nothing, he sent new letters.

He apologized.

He apologized for leaving.

For not going to Canada.

For not saying goodbye.

For writing about death, for writing about how much it hurt because that is not what he should have written. Everything between them should have been love, it should have been the one good thing left in the universe.

And nothing came.

Not from Berger. Or Sheila, of Jeanie, or Woof or anyone.

So he stopped apologizing.

They were not reading them anyway. Why write kind words when it breaks your heart to do it? Why be kind when there is nothing left of your soul to spare?

He let the letters grow dirty, he let mud and sweat fall on them, he watched as his handwriting grew sharp and small and dark.

He told Berger that he wanted to die. That maybe he should just lay down in the warm mud and let it sink into his skin and hope that death found him before the hazy yellow sun fell beneath the cover of thick waxy green jungle and the endless night came with its silent horror.

He told him that sometimes he dreamed of him, that sometimes he could wake up and just for a moment, before a breath, before he ever opened his eyes, he could believe that he was home again and that if he reached out a hand Berger would be there, warm under his fingertips, his open palm.

He told him what it was like to know that half of your soul was half a world away.

He never got a reply but he never hoped for one anymore either.

He was invisible.

His feet walked on without him acknowledging them, he walked by children playing, smiling, laughing. He saw couples holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes as if the world started and ended with one another.

And the trees grew familiar. He knew the places where the shade would linger even when the sun was high; he knew the way the sunlight looked, the way it glistened through the leaves like stars if he lay safe beneath the canopy. It looked like dreams, so real that he could almost slip back into those thoughts and dream of England and impossible futures with Berger and Sheila and Woof and Jeanie and Crissy and Dionne and everyone all together and young forever.

And he saw them.

Just a handful of people.

But they were beautiful.

He could just make them out from here. Golden hair in curls running down her back, and a baby, a beautiful baby girl laughing in the sunshine, arms stretched out as if she could touch the sky. Jeanie. She was laughing, he could almost hear it, like a whisper on the wind with something else mixed in, something heavier and male and brilliant and he could see him. Woof laying on the grass, hand reached out over his head to prod the baby, to make her laugh, to have an audience for the faces he was making.

And the others all around, like a mirage in the jungle, a hallucination, bodies that were not stripped and bloodied and devoid of life but living and breathing and smiling and laughing and real. Hair that was bright and colorful and long and beautiful and he longed to touch it.

To pretend.

To imagine.

He would die here if they let him.

He got lost in them. Time stopped and floated around him, the sun shown down on his face, warming cold skin and he ceased to exist.

Invisible.

Somewhere children were screaming and men were being tortured and jungles were burning and everything smelled of Napalm and blood and burning and a baby was wandering away from her mother through the green grass.

He followed her with his eyes, watching, imagining all of the bad things that could happen to her, this little blond baby.

Somewhere else child soldiers were captured and tortured, somewhere else babies were thrown into the flames of roaring black smoke fires and two worlds collided in his mind, one overwriting the other.

He did not know he was moving until he found himself in the grass, arms held out for her as she crawled towards him.

A perfect baby girl who did not know that he was invisible. Maybe this once, maybe he could perform miracles.

Bombs fell and men screamed and the sun shone through the trees like stars and maybe he could watch her until her mother came to find her.

A guardian angel.

She was warm and soft in his arms, she gurgled sweetly at him, trying to tell him something with her baby smile.

She did not know that people did not touch him anymore, that he was like the plague to touch. But she was sweet and innocent and all of his darkness could never ruin her, soft and warm and human in his arms.

“Making friends Dia?” A voice like the echo of a memory, sweet, cutting through the din in his mind and tearing him back into time and space. Jeanie.

He could hear his heart pounding in his ears.

He did not want to be recognized.

Did not want to not be recognized.

He just wanted to stay here with them for just a few more moments, forever.

He ducked his head, shaggy hair only a few inches long now curling into his face, hiding his eyes.

She sunk onto the ground next to them in a twirl of skirts and cloth, flashes of purple and gold in the corner of his eye.

“Dia is very empathetic.” A slender white hand reached out and touched blond curls. The baby should crawl out of his arms, she should crawl back to her mother but she doesn’t, she squirmed closer to him, looking under his hair and into his eyes. Jeanie’s eyes.

“Life will not be easy for her. She always finds the sad ones, wants to make them better. Something impossible, just like her mama.”

Her voice was a little sad but she laughed anyway. The sound drove away the others but time was still whirling around him.

He was Claude Hooper Bukowski of Manchester England who had never left New York.

He was the walking dead remains of human 1005963297.

He did not need to look at her to know that Jeanie had leaned back on her elbows, staring up at the sky. This was how they had first met a million years ago. She found him in the park and just like now, she knew he just needed someone to talk to him, a voice to override the others.

“I think that is why she loves Berger so much.” He looked over at her, eyes wide, exposed, visible. She knew him.

But she didn’t.

Her eyes were closed and the sun was dancing on her face, on her eyelids. She was just still a part of his world. A world where you could say his name and imagine that everyone would know who you meant, a world where Berger was still a fact.

“I think she is trying to fix his heart.”

And his own heart was racing and he was here. Visible. In the nowhere park in New York and he was home, where home used to be.

And the baby, her hand pressed against his chest, she could feel his heart beating like he was coming to life, and she laughed.

And Jeanie. Jeanie opened her eyes.

She froze, like time had stopped working for her too, like maybe she got lost between worlds and was trying to find her way back. And then she was kneeling next to him, leaning close, a swirl of fabric and color and hair and her hands were soft on his face. In his lap Dia laughed and pressed her tiny baby hand to his cheek.

“Claude?” She traced his cheek bones as if she were comparing her memory to the present, her eyes wide like she was trying to see the impossible, a ghost drifting through, a miracle that could never happen.

“Claude!”

And she was in his arms and she was warm and real and she was talking but he could not hear her because the others were coming. They were shouting and running, bright and endless and so very alive and they could see him too.

Woof grabbed him from behind, holding him in his arms and rocking him like a child, fingers threading through his hair, kisses pressed to his neck, his mouth. Everyone was kissing him. Sweet soft kisses erasing the chemical smell of soap and napalm and they were warm and the smell of flowers pressed into his skin and when they touched him it was like being alive again.

Like he could fall through time and switch places with the real Claude Hooper Bukowski.

Like he had never died.

And they laughed, and there were tears even if he did not know why.

He did not tell them that no one had cried when he had died the first time, that they had not heard him when he cried out through letters and died with longing to hear them.

Alone.

Invisible.

The gunfire threatened to overtake him, the blood threatened to drown him and sickness welled inside of him, drowning him where he sat but he refused to let it take him now. He pushed the thoughts aside and let himself drift in their arms. One moment more forever.

This would have to be enough. He could pretend that they had never forgotten him. He could pretend that he had not written them telling them that he would die happily if only he could hear their voices or touch their faces, that he would die just to know that somewhere in the world they still existed and still they did not write to him.

He wanted to cry but he was not sure he remembered how.

Jeanie and Woof refused to let him go, the others drifted in and out, leaving spaces for others to fall into. They held him as if they had been as starved for his touch as he had been for theirs. As if they were drowning with it.

They were whispering into his hair, they were telling him stories of the last year, touching his face as if he might break.

And he did not want to think, he did not want time to press forward or for them to ever let go. He did not want to fall from their arms. He did not want to become invisible again.

He wanted to believe that they could not write him, that something stopped them, that they had been sitting here for the last year loving him as he loved them.

It was silly, impossible, but here in their arms he could pretend to believe it.

He would hold onto this last moment of his life until he could no longer keep his eyes open, keep them in his gaze and touch them as if he were still real, as if he were still a human being.

And when he was invisible again, when he faded, he would end it.

Human being number 1005963297.

It was not like he had not died before. This would just be the last time.

The sunlight was beautiful as it danced through the trees. They were lying on the green grass, soft beneath their bodies and they were all entwined. Woof and Jeanie and Dia and him. They whispered stories of the last year when he forgot how to talk, when he just wanted to forget himself in their voices as they played with his hair and pressed kisses to his scarred skin.

Dia had been born right after he left. Claudia. And she was beautiful.

Things had changed. People had escaped to Canada, others had drifted and moved on. They whispered stories of laughter and light and perfect peace. They whispered of protests and music and love and they told him a thousand fates of a thousand people.

They never told him about Berger though. As if they knew that it was what he wanted more than anything but could not stand it if they did. As if perhaps they wanted to hold onto him for just a little bit longer and if they told him he would disappear again.

They were right of course.

He would not survive that.

Like bombs going of in his mind.

Like half of his soul being ripped out and abandoning him a million miles away.

And he wanted to hold on just a little longer. Maybe he could fall asleep like this, here in their arms and find a way to never wake again.

But he could feel the questions building in his chest, rising in his throat. The words echoing in his mind.

‘I think she is trying to fix his heart’

The baby, Claudia, for him Jeanie had told him, snuggled closer, she pressed her face into his chest to hear his heart beat.

“What happened to Berger?” The words were thick and painful, like sandpaper in his throat. The first words he had spoken in weeks.

Jeanie sat up to look at him and Woof held him tighter, burying his face in his neck, arms holding him tight around his middle.

“You died.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, as always, are inspiring love.


End file.
